6.1 Introduction to Formatting Views

Formatting changes the way parts of the view look. A report can contain several views of different types. You apply formatting to each view in a report.

Formatting includes tasks such as adding display titles, formatting text and colors, and changing value formats. Several formatting features apply to specific view types only. Because each of the view types has different characteristics and structures, formatting options change depending on the view type.

When you create or edit a view, select the Properties button to display the formatting options.

6.2 Configuring General Formatting Properties

General formatting properties are those properties that are common to all views of a particular type. However there are a few properties described in this section that are general to all view types.

To specify general properties:

Click the Properties button in the View Editor. To open the View Editor, double-click the view you are editing, or click Edit view in the View Tasks/Options list.

View Title displays a title and title bar for this view in the report. Every view in a report can have its own title. The view title bar is also used to display surface prompts, menus, and the additional information button.

Display additional info button creates an icon in the view title with additional information that you enter in the field.

Allow view to be detached from report creates an icon in the view title that when clicked opens the view in a separate browser window. You can edit the browser window settings by clicking the link.

Depending on the view you select there might be more options. See the related sections in this chapter for information about general options for each view.

To use the automatic axis formatting, select the Auto Axis checkbox. If you turn off Auto Axis, you must specify numbers for the following settings:

Data Axis Min

Data Axis Max

Major Increment Marks

Minor Increment Marks

If your view type is a Combo Chart, you can choose to display a secondary axis by selecting the Display Secondary Axis checkbox and specifying the secondary axis settings.

Click Apply or OK.

6.4 Configuring View Borders, Shading, and Background Color

You can change the background color and borders of the view, the view title bar, column headers and any column in a list view, the report prompt input dialog box, the report prompt selected option, import a background image, and format the Go prompt button.

To change the color of view element:

Click the Properties button in the View Editor. To open the View Editor, double-click the view you are editing, or click Edit view in the View Tasks/Options list.

Ellipses truncates data after a set width and displays ellipses as an indicator in list view types only.

Width is the set width for the column measured in pixels, inches, or percentage.

You can change the width of the column by choosing the column name in the Text and Align properties tab, and set the pixel value for width, for example, 150. By default, all of the columns have variable width in the report, so if you configure it to be a fixed width, as mentioned, you can increase or decrease the width. If you configure a fixed width for only one column, space is taken away from the remaining columns, but if you configure a fixed width for all of the columns, a scroll bar appears at the bottom of the view to help the user navigate the width of the view.

If your chart only includes two colors, the colors are applied in the order listed in the color scheme. If your chart requires more than seven colors, the colors are repeated with patterns applied to represent more values.

Click Apply or OK.

6.8.1 Adding and Changing Themes

You can change the theme colors and add more themes using Oracle BAM Architect.

To add a theme:

Open Oracle BAM Architect and select Data Objects from the list.

Select the Chart Themes or Matrix Themes data object located in the Data Objects/System/Views folder.

Click Contents.

Click Edit Contents.

Click Add.

Enter an Name and unique Number.

Enter a hexadecimal number corresponding to each color choice in each of the color fields. Chart Themes can have up to 16 colors. Matrix Themes let you specify a Border Color, Heading Border Color, and Cell Border Color. In addition you can add up to 10 colors and 10 font colors.

Click Save.

6.9 Configuring Value Formats

Use value formatting to apply currency or decimal formatting to a field containing numeric values, or to apply date formatting to datetime fields. You can specify value formatting when you create or edit a report from the View Editor.

To specify value format:

Click the Properties button in the View Editor. To open the View Editor, double-click the view you are editing, or click Edit view in the View Tasks/Options list.

Select the category describing the value format, and select from the following options:

If you select General, no other formatting selections must be made.

If you select Number, specify a negative number format, the number of decimal places to include, and select the Digits Grouping Symbol checkbox to apply the comma as a thousands separator. Select the Round to the nearest checkbox to display numbers in shorter form such a 20K for 20,000.

If you are formatting a data subtraction calculated field (such as a datetime–datetime field), you can select the To Time Unit checkbox to format the integer result in Days, H:mm:ss. When you use the date subtraction formatting feature, you cannot specify a negative number format or other formatting reserved for numeric values.

If you select Percent, specify the number of decimal places to include.

If you select Currency, specify a negative number format, the number of decimal places to include, and a currency symbol. Select the Round to the nearest checkbox to display numbers in shorter form such a 20K for 20,000.

If you select Timestamp, specify a timestamp format. You can select the Adjust time zone from GMT to checkbox to make time zone adjustments.

If you select Time or Date, choose a type of time or date format in the Type list. You can select the Adjust time zone from GMT to checkbox to make time zone adjustments.

If you select TimeUnit, choose the unit of time to represent from the Type list.

If you select HTML, no other formatting selections must be made. HTML only applies to calculated fields containing HTML to ensure that the HTML is displayed correctly in the view.

Select the Zero checkbox and enter a value to substitute for zero values. This option is only enabled for Number, Currency, and Percent formats.

Select the NULL checkbox and enter a value to substitute for null values.

Click Apply or OK.

6.10 Configuring the Display of Active Data

You can format the look of the active data as it is added to the view. You can specify a color and a time interval to indicate how recently the information arrived.

To format the display of active data:

Click the Properties button in the View Editor. To open the View Editor, double-click the view you are editing, or click Edit view in the View Tasks/Options list.

The color and the color hexadecimal number display for the transaction color. You can also specify the color by typing or pasting a hexadecimal number in this field.

Enter a number in the New Transaction Highlight Interval field to indicate the length of time to highlight active data.

Click Apply or OK.

For the Updating Ordered List view you can select Show Rank Colors.

In the Action List view you can select Show Rank Colors and Does not support active data.

For Chart views you can select Disable chart movement on transition to improve performance, and you can uncheck Show New Transaction Color to disable the color change that highlights active data.

For Columnar Reports only, you can also select the Use the fade transition effect for Active Data checkbox. If you have large amounts of active data, this setting is not recommended. The New Transaction Highlight Area property lets you select Entire Row or Cell Only to indicate where active data is.

6.11 Setting a View-Level Poll Mode Refresh Interval

High data volume views in a report can be set to poll mode with a view-level refresh interval. In poll mode, Oracle BAM Server opens view sets in static snapshot mode. When the user-specified interval elapses, the server reloads the view set snapshot HTML. Setting individual views in a report to poll mode reduces the load on Oracle BAM Server, particularly the Active Data Cache.

To set a view in a report to poll mode:

In the view you are editing, click the Properties button in the View Editor. (To open the View Editor, double-click the view you are editing, or click Edit view in the View Tasks/Options list.)

6.12 Configuring Patterns

If your Chart view contains two or more chart values (for example in a Stacked Bar Chart or Combo Chart), you can control the colors and borders used to define each value using the controls on the Patterns tab in the Oracle BAM Active Studio View Editor.

To configure patterns:

Click the Properties button in the View Editor. To open the View Editor, double-click the view you are editing, or click Edit view in the View Tasks/Options list.